Peter Clemoes - Böcker

This is one of the major works of Anglo-Saxon prose, written by one of the foremost scholars of the time and the acknowledged master of prose style. The text is based on the Royal manuscript, which represents the earliest version of the text, and has corrections and annotation in Aelfric's own hand. All the early alterations to the Royal manuscript (amounting to more than a thousand) and all substantive readings from other manuscripts, many of which reflect Aelfric's own revision, are recorded in the apparatus. A lengthy introduction describes all the manuscripts and analyses in detail Aelfric's development of the text, the nature of his revision, and the distribution and copying of the text over the subsequent two centuries. A subsequent volume, currently in preparation by M.R. Godden, will provide commentary and glossary for this text and for the Second Series which was edited by Professor Godden and published by the Early English Text Society (Supplementary Series, 5) in 1979.

Peter Clemoes brings a lifetime's close study of Anglo-Saxon texts to this appreciation of Old English poetry, with an alternative interpretation which relates the poetry to both the entire Anglo-Saxon way of thinking and the structures of its society. Clemoes proposes a dynamic principle of Old English poetry, very different from the common notion of formulas slotted into poems for stylistic variation. In extended discussions of particular poems and images as well as of changes in language, he shows how the poetic medium became a vehicle for increasing transformation to Christian literacy and to that religion's conceptions of the natural world, morality, and individuality. Carefully thought out and elegantly written, this book is also accessible to students: its numerous quotations are accompanied by modern English translations.

Several unusual fields of study are extensively explored in this volume: a distinctive politico-religious cult, penitentials, inscriptions, the Sutton Hoo whetstone and medical knowledge; while treatments of more 'standard' subjects like late Anglo-Saxon law, King Alfred's Boethius and Beowulf, lead to unusual conclusions. A phenomenon special to Anglo-Saxon England is given a full and separate treatment in a careful and imaginative analysis of the ecclesiastical and political significance of the cults of murdered royal saints. Elizabeth Okasha's Hand-List which has been indispensable to any work on Anglo-Saxon non-runic inscriptions for some time has been refreshed by the description and illustration of twenty-six additional items and by other addenda and corrigenda. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Four very different kinds of Anglo-Saxon thinking are clarified in this volume: traditions, learned and oral, about the settlement of the country, study of foreign-language grammar, interest in exotic jewels as reflections of the glory of God, and a mainly rational attitude to medicine. Publication of no less than three discoveries augments our corpus of manuscript evidence. The nature of Old English poetry is illuminated, and a useful summary of the editorial treatment of textual problems in Beowulf is provided. A re-examination of the accounts of the settlement in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle yields insights into the processes of Anglo-Saxon learned historiography and oral tradition. A thorough-going analysis of an under-studied major work, Bald's Leechbook, demonstrates that the compiler, perhaps in King Alfred's reign, translated selections from a wide range of Latin texts in composing a well-organized treatise directed against the diseases prevalent in his time. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

The contents of this first volume typify the range of interests that will be covered throughout the series. The topics treated include the first two centuries of Christianity in East Anglia; geographical knowledge in King Alfred's court; the part played by Bishop 'thelwold's school at Winchester in the period of tenth-century monastic reform in standardizing the vernacular and in studying and composing Latin poetry; allegory in Old English literature; the place of origin of the Book of Kells; the source of a fourteenth-century Icelandic saga writer's picture of Edward the Confessor; the principles of the modern study of pre-Conquest architecture; and the contemporary state of our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon house. There is also a bibliography which lists all books, articles and reviews published in the field during 1971, and which is continued annually in the series.

Among topics covered in this volume, two important authorship questions are settled; the discovery of a major Northumbrian settlement is reported; the conceptions of Old English literature which have prevailed during the last three hundred years are paraded for critical inspection and substantial contributions are made to our knowledge of subjects as diverse as a monastic library of the first rank, eighth-century Latin poetic activity, metrical technique and literary convention in our greatest surviving vernacular poem; the family basis of political power in the tenth century; late Anglo-Saxon legal concepts; and scientific exposition in the early eleventh century. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book (with a separate section onomastic section). There is also an index to volumes 6 - 10, complementing the index found in volume 5.

Among the diverse topics covered in this volume is a pioneer account of a unique group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries preserved on the continent and the publication of a previously unknown charter. Themes illuminated are as varied as the status of women, early urban history, the nature of medical collections, the standing of Marian feasts and the function of musical notation. The study of Old English poetry is advanced textually, codicologically, culturally, linguistically and critically. Innovation and established practice go hand-in-hand: a record of the first conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and versions of six papers read at conference are included. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Was Old English metre really based on stress and rhythm? Do we really know that a particular glossed manuscript of a Latin curriculum author was used in an Anglo-Saxon classroom and, if so, how? How were disputes about bookland dealt with? What happened to the last male representative of the West Saxon royal line after the Norman Conquest? And what are the implications of the Taylors' great work on Anglo-Saxon architecture for related studies? These are among the challenging questions taken up in this book. The publication of findings concerning a striking sculptured stone unearthed at Repton and an interpretation of a panel on the Ruthwell Cross bring us close to some distinctive Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking. So do two source studies of vernacular prose, a demonstration of Aldhelm's interest in how a name is related to its referent, and a searching enquiry into early Anglo-Saxon kingship. Textual criticism and phonology are put to good use too. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Areas of study pursued in this book include a revealing grammatical document from eighth-century Northumbria; renewed excavations at Sutton Hoo are reported; the existence of an unnoticed late Old English prose version of parts of Gregory's Dialogues is pointed out. Fresh thinking is directed to topics as interesting and diverse as a design on the Sutton Hoo purse lid; the origin of a little-considered English decorated manuscript containing lives of saints now in Paris; the enigmatic poem Wulf and Eadwacer; word order as an element on Old English poetic style; surviving traces of the teaching which Theodore and Hadrian delivered in England; the career of a Latin text much studied in English schools for its difficult vocabulary; the political aspects of relic cults during the last century and a half of Anglo-Saxon monarchy; and the organization of the invading armies led by Swein Forkbeard and Cnut. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book; there is also a comprehensive index to volumes 11-15.

This volume offers fundamental evidence and discussion illuminating a wide range of important subjects: possible influence of Cicero on Bede's attitude to rhetoric; the probability that Theodore and Hadrian brought a glossary from Italy to England; the traditional concept of the narrator in Old English poetry; the nationality of the author of the Old English poem Genesis B; the conceptions of history controlling the Old English Orosius; the establishment of Square minuscule as the standard English script of the tenth century; criteria for distinguishing between Anglo-Saxon script written in England and script written by Anglo-Saxons on the continent; the grounds for claiming that certain surviving pre-Conquest manuscripts were once at Glastonbury; the extent of the circulation of Prudentius's Psychomachia in Anglo-Saxon England; the regional distribution of names of different origins among the moneyers of the Anglo-Danish era. Early and late periods and north and south thus find a place in this searching treatment of intellectual, cultural and settlement issues. The usual comprehensive bibliography rounds off the book.

This volume explores many fundamental questions regarding Anglo-Saxon history. Among those considered is the question of did the earliest English prose really divide into a Mercian tradition and a separate West Saxon one? What is the full roll-call of extant texts containing late Old English 'Winchester' words? How far was Anglo-Saxon medicine hocus-pocus and how far the fruit of deliberate experimentation? How much Greek vocabulary was known in Anglo-Saxon England, and how was it known and how used? How did Anglo-Saxon land law work in practice? Advances in scholarship, application of modern scientific knowledge of a type not normally available, fresh directions of thought, original analysis, stricter criteria and additions to the stock of primary evidence all characterize this book. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

This volume makes important contributions to our stock of primary manuscript evidence: it recovers parts of six previously unrecorded charters and analyses two sets of fragments, each unique in its own way - two leaves of Old Testament text written in Mercia or Canterbury early in the ninth century and six leaves of a missal written at Worcester in the mid-eleventh century. Significant issues in both ecclesiastical and secular history are tackled too - the location of Lindsey, the fate of Rutland during the Scandinavian invasions and settlements, and the state of our knowledge of the archaeology of the Five Boroughs of Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Lincoln. Vernacular literature receives its fair share of attention as well: the relationship between author and audience is examined in the cases of a biblical poem and of the prose homiliary which is still least well understood among the principle ones extant. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

Place-names, charters, coins and manuscripts are among the forms of evidence studied in this second volume. The topics range from the course of English settlement in the south-east to the power and influence of a leading aristocratic family in the tenth century and the possible presence of Jews in England in the eleventh. An important liturgical manuscript, the Bosworth Psalter, is more securely localized; the exemplars of the Vercelli Book and its probable area of origin are clarified. Several motifs in Old English literature are elucidated, and the influence of Christian doctrine on the poetry is considered in a survey of scholarly opinion and in a lively discussion on Beowulf. Bede's achievements as a scholar and teacher are examined 1300 years after his birth. The bibliography, noting all contributions to Anglo-Saxon studies in 1972, continues the annual series begun in volume 1.

The Anglo-Saxons' sense of the past, their colour vocabulary and their ties of kinship are among the topics considered in this third volume. Evidence for contemporary ecclesiastical architecture is extracted from an Anglo-Latin poem and evidence for the post-Conquest Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium from an Icelandic saga. A prominent critic of Old English literature provides a reconsideration of The Seafarer. A review article surveys the work of the previous twenty years on Anglo-Saxon charters. The bibliography lists all books, articles and significant reviews published in any branch of Anglo-Saxon studies during 1973.

The materials studied in this volume extend from small pieces of evidence made to reveal Frankish influence on the beginnings of Bath Abbey to a post-Conquest gradual recognized as unique testimony to the pre-Conquest music of Christ Church, Canterbury. An arcane style of Latin poetry much in vogue in tenth-century England is given a full account; likewise an eleventh-century Canterbury copy of a large anthology of Latin poetry for classroom use is properly described. A discussion of the aesthetic principles governing the use of colour in Anglo-Saxon manuscript illumination raises artistic questions not usually considered separately. The corpus of known Anglo-Saxon moneyers is further rectified; late Anglo-Saxon metal-work is surveyed; two decades of post-Stenton debate about the Viking settlements are reviewed; a system of standardizing short titles for Old English texts is presented and there is the usual bibliography of the previous year's corpus of Anglo-Saxon studies.

Manuscripts are the form of evidence most studied in this volume: the likely seventh- and eighth-century English ownership of a fifth-century copy of a Hieronymian commentary is meticulously reconstructed; an edition and full discussion of the eighth-century Anglian collection of royal genealogies and regnal lists advance our understanding of this difficult material; and it is shown that most of the drawings in the Junius codex of Old English poetry probably derived from an illustrated copy of an Old Saxon poem on Genesis which came to this country in the middle of the ninth century. Vernacular literature is well represented: two leading features of narrative technique are examined, one in Beowulf, the greatest surviving poem of the age, and the other in the works of 'lfric, perhaps its greatest writer of prose. A wide-ranging survey of some of the main problems in the modern-day study of Anglo-Saxon coinage makes a fundamental contribution both to that study itself and to the understanding of it by those in other specializations.

Work in this volume offers insights into the Anglo-Saxons' literature, both Latin and vernacular, their study of Latin, their documents, art and artefacts, agricultural practices, their cognizance of Roman predecessors, and later Icelandic knowledge of them. The literary contributions include a major study of Aldhelm's Latin prose style, arguing against its supposed 'Irishness' and placing it firmly in the main tradition of rhetorical amplification coming through from ancient times. In the field of vernacular poetry a prevalent, but illogical, interpretation of a thematically significant obscurity in Beowulf is challenged, and Cynewulf's penitential concern is emphasized. The physical remains of the eighth-century watermill at Tamworth and a compiled survey of early medieval mill terminology are correlated. Old English place-names containing Latin loan words are reconsidered. The sources of a fourteenth-century Icelander's knowledge of late Anglo-Saxon history are further delineated in a third, concluding article on the Játvarthar saga. There is the usual bibliography of the previous year's studies in all branches of Anglo-Saxon.

What scientific observations is Bede likely to have brought to bear on the Easter controversy? What interest did the Anglo-Saxons take in precious stones and what did they know about them? Are heroic values rejected in one of Cynewulf's poems? What was Anglo-Saxon carpentry like? These are among the questions taken up in this volume. Observations to determine the day of the equinox in Bede's Northumbria; Anglo-Saxon lapidary knowledge (particularly in the Old English Lapidary); lists of saints' resting-places as an aspect of the cult of saints in the intellectual and social life of Anglo-Saxon England; the symbolism of the Pacx/Pax/Paxs coin legend; the construction of some wooden roofs, walls, floors, window-frames, doors and, especially, the frame of a spire: these topics are subjected to keen examination - the last an often neglected line of enquiry. In the field of vernacular poetry there are analyses of the Beowulf poet's artistic point of view when treating his hero's relationship to the W'mundings, and of Cynewulf's when treating pagan heroic society in Juliana.

Through close analysis and careful weighing of evidence the authors of this volume tackle a wide range of questions in Anglo-Saxon history and culture and often arrive at opinions different from those generally accepted. Contributions are made on subjects as diverse as the Anglo-Saxon settlement, early Northumbrian history, the 'weapon' vocabulary of Beowulf, world history in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a woman's stock of clothes in the mid-tenth century and vernacular preaching before 'lfric. Historical studies are represented by an examination of the position of the 'theling in matters of royal succession, by a refutation of the doctrine of muddle in the records of earliest Northumbria and by an identification of the sources of the Chronicle's knowledge of world history, showing in particular that the compilation of the Chronicle and the composition of the Old English Orosius are not likely to have been closely connected, as has often been thought. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

This volume mostly deals with manuscripts, directly or indirectly. Of outstanding importance is the first ever attempt to list all the surviving manuscripts that were written or owned in Anglo-Saxon England. There are studies of particular manuscripts: three Latin poems are added to the very few known to have been composed in the time of Athelstan the first; the damaged page in the Exeter Book of Old English poetry is made to yield a better text than before; the distinctive sense of scholarship and literary style that went into a late Old English editing of one of King Alfred's prose works is revealed. Another study assembles the widely scattered evidence for slave raiding and slave trading in England from the Anglo-Saxon settlement to the advent of the Normans. Other interpretative contributions examine word order in Beowulf and make further advances in the critical appreciation of The Seafarer.

Concerned with the basic materials of documents, literature, art, place-names, inscriptions, coins, buildings and archaeological finds, the twenty-two original studies that make up this 1971 text brought fresh understanding to various important topics in Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Native, continental, Scandinavian and Irish elements in five centuries of Anglo-Saxon history are represented. Each contribution exemplifies the methods and expertise of a modern specialisation, but collectively the essays show the value of a joint approach. They form a fitting tribute to a scholar who has kept primary sources to the forefront in her own work and who has illuminated an exceptionally wide range of them.

Peter Clemoes brings a lifetime's close study of Anglo-Saxon texts to this appreciation of Old English poetry, with an alternative interpretation which relates the poetry to both the entire Anglo-Saxon way of thinking and the structures of its society. Clemoes proposes a dynamic principle of Old English poetry, very different from the common notion of formulas slotted into poems for stylistic variation. In extended discussions of particular poems and images as well as of changes in language, he shows how the poetic medium became a vehicle for increasing transformation to Christian literacy and to that religion's conceptions of the natural world, morality, and individuality. Carefully thought out and elegantly written, this book is also accessible to students: its numerous quotations are accompanied by modern English translations.

Four very different kinds of Anglo-Saxon thinking are clarified in this volume: traditions, learned and oral, about the settlement of the country, study of foreign-language grammar, interest in exotic jewels as reflections of the glory of God, and a mainly rational attitude to medicine. Publication of no less than three discoveries augments our corpus of manuscript evidence. The nature of Old English poetry is illuminated, and a useful summary of the editorial treatment of textual problems in Beowulf is provided. A re-examination of the accounts of the settlement in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle yields insights into the processes of Anglo-Saxon learned historiography and oral tradition. A thorough-going analysis of an under-studied major work, Bald's Leechbook, demonstrates that the compiler, perhaps in King Alfred's reign, translated selections from a wide range of Latin texts in composing a well-organized treatise directed against the diseases prevalent in his time. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.